Signing may give babies learning advantage

By Amy Lawson

Thursday

Jun 21, 2007 at 12:01 AMJun 21, 2007 at 6:14 PM

When Holly Salegna's son turned 2, he started talking. Though speech came a little later for him than most children his age, Salegna wasn't worried. She'd been communicating with him through baby signs almost from the day he was born.

When Holly Salegna's son turned 2, he started talking. Though speech came a little later for him than most children his age, Salegna wasn't worried.

She'd been communicating with him through baby signs almost from the day he was born.

"I used it with all three of my children. They were able to tell me, 'more,' 'shoes,' 'socks,' 'all done,' before they were able to say it," said Salegna of Norwich. "I could understand what their needs were before they could. When my son did start talking, it wasn't little words here and there, it was full sentences."

The baby signing craze started in the mid-1990s, when research done by the University of California at Davis showed children benefited long term from learning simple signs as babies. The techniques use some altered versions of American Sign Language words to give babies a chance to communicate with their parents before they can talk.

"Babies are smarter than we think," said Amy Camassar, who, with Salegna, owns Papoose, a family learning center in Norwich, Conn. "They have thoughts and want to communicate much earlier than before they're developmentally able to speak."

Camassar said baby signing is geared for hearing children, and the signs are modified because it's not always easy for tiny hands to make the same movements as an adult signer.

"The program is designed to give parents a slew of signs they can begin teaching as soon as their baby can wave 'bye-bye,' " she said.

Camassar teaches classes on baby signing and will hold a workshop this weekend for parents interested in the technique. The programs generally include classes, a book of signs and a DVD, she said.

Naysayers range from those who raised smart children the old-fashioned way, without fancy products, to researchers who believe watching videos can harm infants by "addicting" them to a medium statistically associated with obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.

"We were worried at first that teaching Ava to sign could delay her speech, and some of our relatives said that could happen," Brett Scott said. "In fact, we think it has definitely been the opposite. She became obsessed with the videos and then started talking early."

Like Ava, babies seem to like signing because they exhibit a preference for languages over non-languages. A 2002 study by Ursula Hildebrandt, then a doctoral student at the University of Washington, showed hearing 6-month-olds two television monitors; one told a story in American Sign Language and the other showed the same story in pantomime. Babies showed longer eye contact and attention to the ASL version, Hildebrandt reports.

"The research has showed that children end up with a wider range of vocabulary, that they read a grade level higher, and that they speak longer sentences when they've used baby signing," Camassar said. "That's why we support it."

Researchers say there is a window of time between 5 months and 5 years when babies can learn easily. These products seek to capitalize on that opportunity.
Leading the way

Linda Acredolo, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California at Davis, and Susan Goodwyn, professor of psychology at California State University, Stanislaus, largely are credited with creating the popularity of sign language for babies through their 20 years of research.

Their long-term study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, tested more than 140 children at intervals from 11 months old to 36 months old and then again at age 8. Though some educators caution signing may delay language development, Acredolo and Goodwyn found babies who had been taught to sign began talking earlier and in longer sentences than those who didn't sign.

At 3, children who signed talked at 4-year-old levels; at 8, those children scored an average of 12 points more on IQ tests.

"My son is going into fourth grade and can read at a sixth-grade level. I don't know if that's because of the signing, but I know it didn't hurt," Salegna said. "We saw how effective it was right away, and have never doubted how it worked."

Gannett News Service contributed to this report.

Reach Amy Lawson of the Norwich Bulletin at alawson@norwichbulletin.com

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